Monday, May 18, 2015

The process of creating and publishing videos can be a great way to get students excited about researching, storytelling, and sharing their work with an audience. For teachers who have never facilitated video creation projects in their classrooms, choosing the right style of video and the right tools can be a bit confusing at first. To help bring clarity to the styles and tools, I have a rather simple outline that I use in my video creation workshops. That outline with suggested tools for creating videos in each style is included in the PDF embedded below. You can download the PDF here.

Once a year I put out a call for guest bloggers and share those posts for a week. This year, I'm going to run those posts during the week of June 1st. Over the last six years I've had some awesome guest bloggers share their knowledge and experience with us. If you would like to be a guest blogger please read on and complete the form below.

I'm looking for guest bloggers who can share current (2014/2015) experiences of using technology in their schools. Guest bloggers should be current classroom teachers, teacher-librarians, technology integration coaches, or school-level administrators. I would like to share stories of trying new things (apps, websites, strategies) and what you and your students learned from the experience. If you can tell the story in 600 words or less, that's a bonus. While I cannot pay you for your post, I will include links to your blog or website as well as a short bio about you. Past guest bloggers have reported still getting traffic to their blogs more than a year after their posts appeared.

Please note that the last time I put out a call for guest bloggers, more than 100 people responded in 48 hours. I wish that I could publish all of the posts, but I simply cannot do that. I'll select 25 to 30 posts at the most. I will send notifications to accepted guest bloggers by May 25th.
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Last week Remind turned on the chat feature for all teachers who use their free text messaging service to communicate with students and parents. Using the chat feature is optional. You can turn it on or off for specific classes within your account. You can also set times for when you will or will not be available to chat. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how to adjust the chat settings.

It's Okay to Be Smart includes a list of references with each video. Open the description below the video on YouTube to find links to the references.

Applications for Education
At this time of year in the northern hemisphere we start to have more thunderstorms and large rain storms. This lesson is one that students can share with friends and family when they say, "it smells like rain."

Recently, I stumbled upon Sketch Toy - a web-based drawing tool and Chrome App that allows you to quickly create and share drawings from any browser. What makes Sketch Toy different from other tools is the ability to not only draw, but also automatically convert your drawings into step-by-step animations that can be shared with a link. Additionally, anyone who accesses your drawing can then add on to it and generate a new link to share, allowing students to quickly iterate on each others' drawings WITHOUT needing an account!

Sketch Toy also lets you rotate your drawings as 3D models and includes a "vibration" setting which makes your drawings appear slightly animated - much like Squigglevision. You can also drag any image from your desktop onto the screen and incorporate it into your drawing.

Uses in the Classroom

Because of the quick learning curve, I could see Sketch Toy being a great prototyping or quick illustration tool. Students could illustrate a story or a poem, draw out a math problem, or even use it as a graphing tool. As illustrated in the video below, another great option could be to use Sketch Toy in conjunction with a screencasting app like SnagIt or Screencastify in order to tell at story.

Beth Holland will be a Summer Workshop instructor for EdTechTeacher. You can learn more from her and the rest of their group in 5 cities across the country.